Onlife

Call for Papers - SPT 2009 Converging Technologies, Changing Societies 16th International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology July 8-10 University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands Deadline for abstracts: January 5, 2009 SPT 2009 welcomes high quality papers and panel proposals in all areas of philosophy of technology. Given the focus of this year's conference, papers dealing with converging technologies and their social and cultural impact are especially welcomed. SPT 2009 will include 15 tracks: 1. Converging technologies and human enhancement. Chair: Peter-Paul Verbeek 2. Converging technologies and engineering sciences. Chair: Mieke Boon 3. Converging technologies and risks. Chairs: Sabine Roeser and Sven Ove Hansson 4. Converging technologies: general issues. Chair: Armin Grunwald 5. Ethics and politics of emerging technologies. Chair: Tsjalling Swierstra 6. Philosophy and ethics of biomedical and nanotechnology. Chair: Bert Gordijn and Joachim Sc

This year, for the first time in its history, the Loebner Prize competition was held in England, at the University of Reading to be precise. It was organised by Kevin Warwick and Huma Shah. Independently of whether Turing might have been pleased (he was not well treated in this country, recall?), there was a satisfying sense of “coming home” of the Turing Test (henceforth TT ). Expectations were high, and they very highly advertised too. The meeting was perfectly organised. Having been invited to play the role of a judge, together with several other colleagues, including two members of the IEG , Mariarosaria Taddeo and Matteo Turilli ( here are their pictures and Rosaria's interview ) , I enjoyed the opportunity to see from close-up the machinery and the TT . It was intriguing and great fun. Because there were interviews with the BBC and other things going on, and because we were also supposed to take part in the parallel AISB Symposium on the TT , I had time to test only

For a quick report on this year Loebner prize and on how far machines are from behaving even remotely intelligently, click on the title of this blog.

Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Hrsg. von / Edited by Austrian Ludwig-Wittgenstein Society. Band 6 Alois Pichler, Herbert Hrachovec (Eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2007. This is the first of two volumes of the proceedings from the 30th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August 2007. In addition to several new contributions to Wittgenstein research (by N. Garver, M. Kross, St. Majetschak, K. Neumer, V. Rodych, L. M. Valdés-Villanueva), this volume contains articles with a special focus on digital Wittgenstein research and Wittgenstein's role for the understanding of the digital turn (by L. Bazzocchi, A. Biletzki, J. de Mul, P. Keicher, D. Köhler, K. Mayr, D. G. Stern), as well as discussions – not necessarily from a Wittgensteinian perspective – about issues in the philosophy of information, including computational ontolo